Digital Camera News, Reviews and Tips
Axtremex Technology has announced a new CompactFlash card with an 800x speed rating, claiming 120MB/s read speeds and 95MB/s write speeds. The card is UDMA Mode 7 compatible and runs $400 for a 128GB capacity.
Note that even faster speeds have been attained my mainstream manufacturers (see the 1000x Lexar CF card for 150MB/s read speeds); however, prices are much higher.
Details and availability for Axtremex CF cards at Nanoflash.net.
Lexar’s biggest CF card yet just dropped at CES 2012. The Lexar Pro 400x line of CF cards now includes a 256GB card, along with 128GB and 64GB available capacities.
The new cards are UDMA Mode 7 compliant and offer minimum transfer speeds of 40MB per second.
The 128GB and 64GB cards are priced at $469.99 and $299.99, respectively. No word yet on pricing for the 256GB CF card; however, Lexar says it will be available in the first half of 2012.
More details in the press release below. [Read more…]
The CompactFlash Association announced a new XQD standard for CF cards. The new standard is based on the PCIe standard and should offer 125MB/s data transfer speeds out of the gate – with much faster possibilities later down the line.
Speed isn’t the only thing that has changed though. The XQD cards (I’m guessing that’s what we’ll call them… but couldn’t we have stuck to only 2 letters?) are a completely different physical format, which means they won’t work in any current camera. [Read more…]
B&H Photo now has the new SanDisk Extreme Pro UHS-I SD cards in-stock in a variety of sizes. You can see them all here on B&H.
Additionally, B&H has that massive 128GB Extreme Pro CF card in stock as well – it’s not going to go easy on the wallet though…
The future of camera memory cards may be a new CF card that offers transfer rates of 500 MB/sec and capacity in excess of 2 TB. The development of these proposed specifications were announced today as part of a joint effort among Sony, Nikon and SanDisk.
Nikon, SanDisk and Sony have submitted these high-powered specs to the CompactFlash Association in hopes of a future standardization of the format. The new card specifications are based on a PCI Express interface (in order to achieve a 500 MB/sec transfer rate) instead of the Parallel ATA interface used in current generation cards.
According to the statement issued by SanDisk, Sony and Nikon, the new cards will be similar in size to existing CF cards. Hopefully, that also serves as a hint that the new cards will do away with the pins inside camera, which are so susceptible to being bent.
Complete details of the announcement are below. [Read more…]
Lexar announced a number of new additions to its product lineup at CES 2010.
Lexar added a 32GB capacity to its 300x Professional series of CF cards. Additionally, 16GB and 32GB capacities have been added to the 233x CF Pro series.
Lexar’s biggest buzzing product was a new Echo drive series, which are small USB drives that can be set to back up specific files or folders. During a product demo, I saw the utility of how these drives can help photographers working in the field. These drives can be used to automate the backup portion of your workflow, which helps speed things up when you’re out in the field.
As you can see from the above shot of the Echo ZE, Lexar has managed to fit 32GB into a tiny form factor. The Lexar Echo SE drive is bigger, more like a normal-sized USB stick; however, according to Lexar, it is much faster.
More details about the Lexar Echo drives in the press release below. [Read more…]
Following suit with SanDisk and PhotoFast, Lexar has introduced their Professional 600x CF card line. They come in 8GB, 16GB and 32GB flavors. The 8GB version and 16GB version should start shipping this week. The 32GB version will ship in November.
It looks like they smoke too – just check out Rob Galbraith’s tests of the new cards. They hit it where it matters most, in camera.
The Lexar cards are faster in the Canon 7D than the SanDisk Extreme Pro and just a smidgen faster than the PhotoFast 533x Plus. The SanDisk Extreme Pro is a little faster than the new Lexar 600x in the Nikon D300s; however, the Lexar cards manage to get 8 more images out of a burst of RAW + JPEG files than the SandDisk Extreme Pro (58 images vs. 50 images), which makes the Lexar on par with PhotoFast 533x Plus cards for burst capacity.
More details about the new Lexar 600x CF card series in the press release below. [Read more…]
I have been using a few memory cards from PhotoFast over the past few weeks alongside my usual mix of Lexar, Kingston and SanDisk cards. Specifically, the PhotoFast GMonster 533x 32GB and 533x Plus 16GB CF cards have spent a lot of time in my Canon 5D Mark II and a Nikon D300s that I’ve had on hand. Additionally, I’ve tried out the PhotoFast 16GB Class 10 SD/SDHC card. [Read more…]
SanDisk has announced a new series of faster CF cards – the Extreme Pro cards. The big number that SanDisk is throwing out there is 90MB per second max read/write speeds. The question is: “Does it make a difference?”
Well, I haven’t gotten my hands on one yet; however, spec-wise the Canon 5D Mark II and Canon 50D should be able to take advantage of the speed boost. Both cameras feature UDMA support up to Mode 6 for a maximum theoretical transfer rate of 133MB/s, which is well within the new SanDisk cards specs.
Lori Grunin over at Cnet’s Crave took the new Extreme Pro cards for a spin the the Nikon D300s (I couldn’t find any documentation confirming the extent of UDMA support for the D300s) and the Canon 5D Mark II. The differences were minimal in both cases. The D300s produced the same frame rate with Extreme Pro and 60MB/s flavor of Extreme cards. The Pro version was able to give about a 10% savings on buffer emptying after a burst of shots. The results were similar in the 5D Mark II, which got a boost of 0.2 frames per second with the Pro model and an almost 20% discount emptying the buffer after a burst of shots. Hit up Lori’s test for all the facts. [50 kudos to Lori for the hard work.]
Prices? The 64GB model will set you back $811.99 direct from SanDisk – I’ll say that again . . . $811.99! $507.99 for the 32GB model and $304.00 for the 16GB model. Hardly a bargain for a 0.2 fps advantage…
Get the full run down on these new cards in the news release below.
Kingston has stepped up the capacity for their Elite Pro series to 32GB. I’ve been using a 16GB Kingston Elite Pro CF card for a a couple of months in my Canon 5D Mark II and have to say that it works quite well. It slows down after about 9 continuous frames (the best I’ve seen so far has come from Lexar’s 300x 4GB CF Card at 15 continuous frames before it slows down). With the Kingston 16GB Elite Pro, it’s also nice to have plenty of room for the 25MB to 30MB RAW files that the 5D Mark II produces.
The Kingston 32GB Elite Pro CF card retails for $154. Check availability on Amazon.com.
More info in the following press release. [Read more…]